Arc the Lad Import Playtest

Share.

It's a brand new Japanese RPG! Hey -- that dog has a bushy tail. Hee-hee-hee! Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee!

By IGN Staff

Checks release calendar....

Breaths a sigh of relief.

It's come to an end. The flood, that is. We were truly drowning until now. FFX-2. Star Ocean 3. Venus & Braves. Sakura Wars. Long-lasting games played only a few hours through. And then, another RPG is released and we're forced to abandon the character's we'd built up, stop the middle of a developing story, and start a new adventure from scratch.

It's tough, this job sometimes.

But, thankfully, it's all come to an end. Following last week's release of Anoop Gantayat, Contributor

And so we have this latest Arc the Lad title, forming Sony's entry into the flood that it no-doubt arranged. What's interesting is that this game is completely different from the other titles in the above list. Strategy-style battles, a multi-sided storyline and some fine PS2 visuals seem to offer a lot for RPG fanatics like us, but does this game stack-up to the competition?

The world of Arc the Lad is split into two sides, one controlled by humans and one by demons (and in between them are the lowest of the lowest forms, monsters and beasts). You play as two different characters whose stories unfold in different parts of the world. The game starts you off as Kharg, descendent in the Neederia royal line that rules over the continent of Aldo. Kharg lost his father as a child, and his mother, who rules the land, is reluctant to speak of the tragedy. On the flip side is Darc, the demon. Darc lost his human mother before he was old enough to know her and was raised by his demon father until his death at the hands of the Dragon Clan of flying demons. He was then taken in as a slave. The game starts you off with opening prologues for both characters and from them on, you switch off automatically according to the storyline.

In Arc the Lad, humans hate demons, demons hate humans, and so-forth. You've probably seen this kind of thing before, but in fact the game's storyline has proven to be its biggest draw for us. There's of course a connection between Kharg and Darc that you'll learn of in the first couple of hours of play and we're anxious to see it unfold down the road. It also turns out that there's more to the division of the world than just the demon/man thing, as demons themselves have clans as do humans have kingdoms. There's plenty going on in the story's background, including worldwide struggles for spirit stones which serve as a means of magic for humans and demons alike and an all powerful set of ancient spirit stones which can be used to control all. Air ships, a love triangle, mysterious female musicians who play ancient instruments now mostly forgotten -- it's all to be had.

While we're not complaining, the progression of the story has been incredibly slow thus far, although quite a bit has happened. The character prologues, which detail why the two heroes are out to do what they're out to do ended up taking us eight hours of playtime. Now at the fifteen-hour mark, things are starting to pick up and we're starting to see a definite goal for at least one of the characters, but plenty of surprises seem to be in store. Arc the Lad looks like it will have a huge amount of story packed into its disk (lasting a huge amount of time).

Outisde of the storyline, we've found ourselves impressed by how good the game looks. It's got some of the finest image quality this side of Tekken 4, even managing to outclass Final Fantasy X-2 and Star Ocean in that area. Characters and the world surrounding them are detailed and full of color. Character animation and effects aren't as impressive as in the other two RPGs, but given the smaller scale of the game at hand, Sony's work with its own hardware is to be applauded.

While its story and look are enough to keep us playing, the gameplay of Arc the Lad doesn't hold pace. So far, we're primarily irked with the game's battle system, which plays out very similar to the battles of Sakura Wars. Battles are of the strategy variety, with your party facing off against a party of enemies. You're free to move characters over a limited range during the course of a given turn and can attack, cast spells, use items and so-forth. Picture a grid-based strategy title, except minus the grid, allowing you to position your characters in a greater variety of ways (this feature is put to use with your aligning your attacks to strike multiple enemies).

While this system was loads of fun in Sakura Wars, the same can't be said of Arc the Lad. There's a sense of unbalance from the system. You can move a character and have him attack someone, but you can't have a character attack someone and then move. Similarly, you can pick up an item and attack someone, but you can't pick up an item and move away. It feels cheap and limited.

The game's handling of items is its biggest problem. When enemies drop items and gold, you have to physically make your character go to pick up the items. While this isn't unreasonable, what's very annoying is that items that you haven't picked up at the end of a battle are lost for good. What in the world is keeping the characters from automatically collecting the items before heading about their way? The result, for us at least, is that we've been delaying the end of battle to pick up as many dropped items as possible.

We sigh when presented with a battle in Arc the Lad, whereas with other games like Sakura Wars and Final Fantasy Tactics, we're anxious to go through as many battles as we can. And there are a whole lot of battles in this game. Whenever you move around on the game's overworld map, you face the possibility of a random attack by a weak collection of enemies. You can select an option of fleeing the battle, and we've always been successful at doing so, but only once you've actually gotten into the battle. Did the developers assume that their's was the only RPG waiting to be played?

There are a few other systems that we haven't had a chance to play with, the most intriguing being a Parts system where you equip upgrade parts for your weapons rather than equipping actual weapons themselves. It also seems like battle spells will take on more dramatic form down the road with your summoning your airship (or flying beast if you're playing the demon side) in battle. Not that this will matter too much as currently the game discourages the use of magic by forcing you to buy Spirit Stones which replenish your magic supply (unless you're willing to put up with the tedium of picking up the spirit stones dropped by enemies in battle).

Outside of this, we've occasionally found ourselves dozing off due to the blandness of the game's presentation. The story is engaging enough, but its voiced sequences have to this point been very infrequent, often lasting just a few seconds before jumping back into silence. Boring town music and some decidedly unimaginative dialogue ("As you know, this world is divided into beast and human halves" -- thank you for reminding me, mom!) were mocked by the likes of Grandia some five years ago.

The battles are also bland, with just about the most mundane battle music we've ever heard being used for the standard "random" encounters (included in one of the videos shown below -- can you figure out which one?). Cliches abound as well. Are we the only ones who are tired of characters uttering catch phrases before unleashing attacks? It doesn't fit the game at all in the case of Arc the Lad.

So with a poorly executed battle system and stale presentation, what's driven us to play so far? That's right, the story. We're anxious to find out what will happen next. The scenario writers have kept things interesting up until this point, and assuming the game doesn't get too annoying, we'll keep on playing until the credit's roll just to see how things pan out. Otherwise, Yuna, Rikku and the possibility of another bath sequence, await.

Checks release calendar. Oh darn. Game Boy Advance gets a new Dragon Quest Monsters game on the 29th. Don't these people coordinate!?